How secret is it? (8)

The mind-boggling saga of Hillary Clinton’s use of an unsecured private email server for the conduct of official business as Secretary of State continues. Indeed, it continues to gather momentum. Today Catherine Herridge and Pamela Browne reveal that the 22 Top Secret emails entirely withheld from production by the Department of State this past Friday included “operational intelligence” that involves espionage sources and methods, adding that lives have been put at risk by the mishandling of this information. At the Observer, John Schindler adds:

At a minimum, valuable covers have been blown, careers have been ruined, and lives have been put at serious risk.

I can confirm that the FoxNews report, which lacks any specifics about exactly what was compromised, is accurate. And what was actually in those Top Secret emails found on Hillary’s “unclassified” personal bathroom server was colossally damaging to our national security and has put lives at risk.

Discussions with Intelligence Community officials have revealed that Ms. Clinton’s “unclassified” emails included Holy Grail items of American espionage such as the true names of Central Intelligence Agency intelligence officers serving overseas under cover. Worse, some of those exposed are serving under non-official cover. NOCs (see this for an explanation of their important role in espionage) are the pointy end of the CIA spear and they are always at risk of exposure – which is what Ms. Clinton’s emails have done.

Life as a leading Democrat is good in a way we will never know, but we’re far into T.S. Eliot territory here. That’s the territory captured in Eliot’s query: After such knowledge, what forgiveness?